Trump Final Nominations for National Labor Relations Board Announced

Trump has nominated William Emanuel and Marvin Kaplan for the remaining vacancies on the five-member National Labor Relations Board. William Emanuel is a management-side labor attorney with decades of labor and employment experience. Kaplan is currently counsel to the commissioner of the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission and previously served as the Republican workforce policy counsel for the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Both nominations would be for a five-year term set to expire on 2022. At present, no confirmation hearing dates have been made public, although the administration hopes the candidates will be confirmed before the August recess.

These recent nominations should give hope to private-sector employers that the NLRB is poised to take a more employer-friendly approach. The board is likely to consider a number of significant legal issues once the vacancies are filled, including: joint employer relationships; handbooks, work rules and employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act “(NLRA”); collective bargaining; graduate student employee status; and more. We will continue to update our subscribers with more information as it becomes available.